Transferred from: Building the Road and Building the Grid
Know what's going on in the circle
2024/05/08
© Laurian Ghinitoiu
On May 24, 2025, the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale will begin. Curated by Italian architect Carlo Ratti, this year's architectural event will be themed on:
Intelligent, natural, artificial, collective
It consists of four major directions: Interdisciplinary, Living Lab, Inspiration Space, and Circular Protocol.
© Sara Magni
Carlo Ratti has been named one of Fast Company's "50 Most Influential Designers in America" and is also featured in the online magazine "The Wisdom List: 50 People Who Changed the World."
He called for "one place, one solution", emphasizing the harmonization between the national pavilion and the international exhibition. "Showing how local wisdom can meet the existential challenges of our time, which can only be addressed through a collaborative approach, reflects the diversity of approaches," he added. If each country brings a success story to the table, together we can assemble a global toolkit fit for the future. ”
The 19th edition of Vismark will focus on the built environment and the many disciplines that shape it. He further explains: "Architecture is at the core, but it is not alone". Buildings, as well as their environment, are one of the largest sources of gas emissions and one of the main culprits contributing to the planet's decline. As the climate crisis accelerates, do we have to succumb to this role, or can we still deliver substantive, non-formal, effective, and fast-achieving solutions?
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Architectural Futurist
Carlo Ratti
Bachelor's degree from Politecnico di Torino
M.A., University of Cambridge
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Carlo Ratti Associati 创始人
Senseable City Lab 创始人
Carlo Ratti graduated from the Politecnico di Torino, followed by a master's degree at the University of Cambridge and a doctoral thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the founder of Carlo Ratti Associati, an architecture studio, and the director of MIT's Senseable City Lab. Currently, Ratti teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Politecnico di Milano and is an expert in urban planning.
Carlo Ratti also has a strong career in the academic field. He has co-authored more than 750 publications, including the most recent Atlas of Perceptual Cities; As a TED speaker, Carlo regularly publishes opinion pieces in international media outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, and co-chairs the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization.
Prior to his appointment as curator in Venice, Carlo Ratti was Project Director at the Strelka School of Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow and Curator at the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin. He is the Chief Curator of the 2019 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (UABB), the co-curator of the 2nd Porto Design Biennale in 2021, and the Creative Coordinator of the 2022 European Nomad Biennale Manifesto 14 Pristina's award-winning "Urban Vision".
Ratti was the chief curator of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture
As an architect and engineer with many years of expertise, Carlo Ratti often uses modern technology to imagine the cities of the future.
Urban practices from the Futurists
Expo 2030 will be held in Torl Vergata in Rome, and the master plan for the Expo Park, developed by Carlo Latti Architects (CRA) in collaboration with partners, will revitalize the area in the form of a solar park. The park is made up of hundreds of unique "energy trees", solar panels that open and close around the clock, not only to collect energy, but also to provide adequate shade for visitors.
环境鸟瞰 © Carlo Ratti Associati
"
Our master plan experiments with collective city-building processes, new energy-sharing strategies, and inclusive urban transformations that go far beyond the time and space constraints of the event.
— Carlo Larty
"
用于收集能量,并为游客提供遮阴的"能量树" © Carlo Ratti Associati
The Expo site is divided into three main areas – the city, the avenue and the park – with a gradual transition from the city to the natural world from west to east between the man-made world and the natural world. The western part of the city serves as the Expo Village and becomes an extension of the Tor Vergata University campus after the Expo. The boulevard will serve as a central pedestrian axis with access to all national pavilions. The eastern part of the park will be covered with dense vegetation and emphasized by thematic buildings.
中央大道 © Carlo Ratti Associati
覆盖茂密植被的公园环境 © Carlo Ratti Associati
A green promenade connects the Roman Expo with the adjacent archaeological site of the Appian Way and other historic buildings and monuments, symbolizing a bridge between history and the future.
绿色长廊 © Carlo Ratti Associati
"
Between trees and buildings, I choose trees.
— Carlo Scarpa
"
In 2021, CRA collaborated with Italian architect Italo Rota to complete a residential project called Greenery. Located in the countryside of northern Italy, a ten-metre-tall tree stands in the center, and multiple living spaces are arranged around leafy foliage, starting from the ground and continuing to the canopy.
© Delfino Sisto Legnani and Alessandro Saletta
The fig tree in the center of the space is called Alma and is 60 years old. In order to create the ideal environment for the trees to thrive, CRA completely renovated the old farmhouse and installed a ten-metre-high glass wall on the south side to maximise natural light. Windows and roofs can be opened and closed automatically to regulate the amount of sunlight and fresh air entering the house.
十米高的玻璃立面为树木带来充足采光 © Delfino Sisto Legnani and Alessandro Saletta
The Greenary project consists of seven setbacks, which are interconnected rooms designed to create a natural journey with trees at the heart of the circulation. Occupants and visitors can head up into the main living space and kitchen with idyllic views of the outdoor pastures.
© Delfino Sisto Legnani and Alessandro Saletta
At Milan Design Week 2022, CRA collaborated with Italo Rota on the project "Perceptual Energy", an art installation that transforms the city's botanical garden into an energy park with a magical atmosphere.
© Marco Beck Peccoz
Using 500 meters of curved copper tubes, the designers created a perceptual path that visually shows how sunlight, wind, and people's movement generate energy. The path is also marked by giant "wind chimes", partitions made of coloured organic photovoltaic panels, and sensors in the canopy that detect visitors and activate mist devices, providing cooling and nourishing the vegetation in the botanical garden.
© Marco Beck Peccoz
Inspired by the organic functions of plants, like the ends of branches or leaves, the copper pipes absorb the energy generated by the overall installation and release it at designated locations in the park. During the day, the installation absorbs and stores the clean energy generated, which is used to illuminate the entire botanical garden at night.
© Marco Beck Peccoz
© Marco Beck Peccoz
In 2009, Ratti and his partners at the Touchable Cities Lab conducted a garbage tracking experiment. They gathered more than 500 volunteers in Seattle to collect more than 3,000 pieces of household waste and mark them with a kind of smart electronic tags, which can be traced to the route and trace of the garbage's "travel".
© Carlo Ratti Associati
In the network established through the sensors, it is not difficult to find that a lot of garbage has not disappeared, but is scattered in different places, like moving a house. Maybe the next time you go to the park, you'll be able to reunite with the sneakers you threw away three years ago.
© Carlo Ratti Associati
"Garbage is one of the most urgent problems to be solved in society at present, which directly or indirectly reflects our life attitudes and behaviors." "This project uses sensors and mobile technology to establish the distribution of waste, helping us to understand the city's cleaning chain and also to improve the city's cleaning and recycling systems." ”
In addition to the impact on the living environment, Carlo Ratti is also very concerned about the details of how technology can improve people's quality of life.
Studio developed Copenhagen wheels. An e-bike capable of quickly transforming a regular bicycle into a hybrid, it can also be used as a mobile sensing unit to capture the energy emitted while riding and braking, and save it for emergencies.
© Carlo Ratti Associati
The wheels are controlled via a smartphone, and their sensing units capture the rider's effort and surrounding information, including road conditions, carbon monoxide, NOx, noise, ambient temperature, and relative humidity. It can also map pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real-time, becoming an extension of a cyclist's daily life.
© Carlo Ratti Associati
CRA has designed the Scribit Pen, an environmentally friendly drawing pen for technology company Scribit, to tackle the plastic pollution generated by the global marking industry.
© Carlo Ratti Associati
© Carlo Ratti Associati
Every part of the Scribit Pen is eco-friendly: the pen barrel is made of biodegradable plastic, the nib and cartridge are made of natural fibers, and the non-toxic (and even edible) ink. These internal components are replaceable, so one barrel can be used indefinitely.
© Carlo Ratti Associati
Biennale theme
Throughout his work over the years, it is clear that Carlo Ratti has a keen interest and enduring passion for nature, cities, technology and energy.
"
We architects tend to think of ourselves as smart, but true wisdom is everywhere: evolving non-physical intelligence, the ever-growing intelligence of computers, and the wisdom of groups. In order to face a thriving and burning world, architecture must harness all the wisdom around us.
— Carlo Larty
"
Carlo Ratti advocates a rational, technical approach to architecture, rigorous and romantic. From urban planning to individual buildings, from interactive installations to product design, he is adept at thinking at various scales, capturing the spark of digital technology and architectural art.
绿色长廊将罗马世博会与古遗址连接起来 © Carlo Ratti Associati
But it's worth mentioning that while Ratti champions the significant changes that new technologies can bring to urban life and design, he still values the meaning of physical space. His research often uses data to reflect the flow of people (and sometimes garbage) in physical space, to perceive people's life trajectories, and to better understand the city as a whole.
Activity data © of people on the MIT campus can be perceived in the laboratory
In the past year, there has been a qualitative leap forward in the field of artificial intelligence, and the physical world and the online virtual world are merging with each other, which affects the design and planning of cities and the understanding of life. But Ratti believes that telecommuting does not herald the demise of office buildings, and that both sociologists and architects need to be connected in physical spaces, and that physical spaces can indeed help people build interpersonal networks, which is irreplaceable.
In the era of the pandemic, people's dependence on public space has weakened, which has indirectly led to a decline in expectations of architecture. Carlo Ratti's views on "Technology and Space" help boost confidence in the current sluggish industry from the inside out.
"建木中心"摩天农场 © Carlo Ratti Associati
Another factor that contributed to Ratti's becoming a trusted curator of the Venice Biennale is likely to have something to do with politics. The last Italian curator appointed for the Biennale was Massimiliano Fuksas 24 years ago, and since then the Biennale has been graced by architects from all over the world, including Rem Koolhaas, Alejandro Aravena, and the first female curator, Kazuyo Sejima. Curated by Lesley Lokko, the last edition of the Biennale was a grand and transformative theme around Africa and its diaspora.
上届威尼斯双年展策展人Lesley Lokko © floornature.eu
However, in the past year, the world has been plagued by wars and the global economy has weakened, leading to the rise of conservative forces. Historically, the president of the Venice Biennale has often been admired for his skills in arts management, but the new president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, who was announced last October, has worked for various right-wing magazines and is the former national leader of the youth wing of Italy's social movement party (MSI), whose founding is inextricably linked to the fascist dictator Mussolini's government.
For this reason, Ratti's appointment is seen by many in the media as a return to the Biennale's conservative tradition: a right-wing president and a white native designer – a safer combination for the current unstable Italian politics.
左:Pietrangelo Buttafuoco 右:Carlo Ratti 图源网络
epilogue
Curating the Venice Biennale requires both intellectual prestige and a strong sense of social responsibility – you need to understand and guide a cultural behemoth.
In the summer of 2025, will Carlo Ratti be able to surprising the world beyond the shackles of current events and the stale conversations within the world of architecture? Let's wait and see.
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审核编辑 | Miranda Heloise